It’s understandable that intergenerational battles over feminism come down to the meaning of consent

It was the journalist Julia Baird who wrote on Twitter: “YOUNG FEMINISTS: What do you think older feminists don’t understand or get exactly right, or just might miss about #metoo, if anything? Am curious to hear.”

Baird’s question appears in the context of high-profile disagreements about #MeToo between some young and older feminists. A few weeks ago, French actor Catherine Deneuve and 100 co-signatories of a letter claimed #MeToo was fostering a “new Puritanism” – a position from which she has since somewhat backed away. Since then, a widely-reported interview with Germaine Greer has appeared, in which the Australian feminist accused the #MeToo movement of “whingeing”.

The women who say they just ‘got on with’ brushing off bothersome men are out of step with this moment, when real change feels possible

Many years ago, I interviewed Doris Lessing, and this is what she said: “It was a different attitude then. We just got on with it.” She was referring to a section of Walking in the Shade, the second volume of her autobiography, in which after cataloguing the tough things she’d gone through as a young woman, she upbraided young women of today, who, as she put it, “scream or swoon at the sight of a penis they have not been introduced to, feel demeaned by a suggestive remark, and send for a lawyer if a man pays them a compliment”.

Back in the day, said Greer, a leering man was considered by all sensible women to be less of a threat than a fool